Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulists. Dr. Stephanie Fein here with Weight Loss for Fertility. And today we are talking about your personal weight loss curriculum. Why is it important to discover your personal weight loss curriculum? I'm so glad you asked. I just adore you. It's important because it's the only way you will lose weight forever. It's the only way you will change your relationship to food and eating forever so you can get to and stay at your new weight permanently, no matter what.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:35]:
And that's always our goal, right? Because weight loss is one thing, but keeping it off is another. And we have to lose weight in a way that we can keep it off forever. That is what we're talking about. I'm always talking about that because I care about forever. Two months, doesn't matter if we gain it all back. So what we're doing is learning things, discovering things, changing things. The way you think about food, hunger and eating right now got you to the weight you are right now. And if you want to change your weight, you have to change that relationship that you have with food, hunger and eating.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:16]:
I'm going to say that again. If you want to change your weight, you have to change the relationship you have currently with food, hunger and eating. And a relationship is really just a set of thoughts you have about someone or something. The way you think about them determines your feelings and actions. Now, you may remember that concept from last week. It's part of cognitive behavioral theory. And if you want more detail about it, you can check out last week's episode 156. But this idea that thoughts create feelings, create actions, and that bundle thoughts, feelings, actions is the relationship you have with a thing, a person, and in this case, food, hunger, eating.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:09]:
So in order to change the thoughts or your relationship, you have to understand first where you are now. We can't go anywhere if we don't know where we are right now. We can't go somewhere different if we don't know where we are right now. And that is where the personal weight loss curriculum comes in. So when you do the weight loss for fertility process, when you lose weight, the weight loss for fertility way, it happens naturally. This idea of your own personal curriculum, I work with you on this, I talk with you. That's what we're doing. We're discovering your personal curriculum and moving through it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:50]:
And it goes something like this. You start with the hunger scale, Truly, you start with the hunger scale only simply. That's it. You start with the hunger scale. Nothing else. And I have many podcasts on this, including the Very recent hunger scale Handbook series. That was episode 148 to 154. We'll hook that up in the show notes.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:14]:
But you start there, and as you go through your day and in fact, your very next meal, you could do this. Right now, you're faced with reasons why it didn't go as planned. So you're all ready to do the hunger scale. You figured it out, you know the concept, and you start with it. And then immediately you're faced with reasons why it didn't go the way you thought it would go, why it wasn't as easy as you thought it would be. And that's not a problem. That's the start of discovering your curriculum. Each roadblock, each challenge, the things that make following through difficult, the things that made it hard to do what you intended to do, what got you derailed, those are the things that you need to learn.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:05]:
Those are the lessons that you need to learn. They are revealing the skills you need to develop. This is such an important way to look at it. Often what we do instead is when we bump up against something, especially with weight loss, when we have a difficulty with something, we blame ourselves for being weak or wrong or bad. And I know that sounds so harsh, but that's what we think. That's what goes through our head, especially when we're trying to lose weight, that there's something fundamentally wrong with us and that's why it's so hard, like everyone else can do it. But no, these obstacles, these difficulties, these challenges are your way to permanent weight loss. They are the way to get where you're going.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:01]:
It's your personal way. It's like revealing the path to you, your path. Many issues are similar among people who are trying to lose weight. There might be emotional eating or overeating, or there's some general buckets that are similar, but the nuances, the particulars for you are very specific to you and your experiences, life, your personality, your preferences. Each path is slightly different. They're all going to the same place, but the path is just a little bit different. Yours is totally unique to you, and your job is to find that path. Your particular path, your unique path.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:48]:
It's required, as a matter of fact, it's core curriculum. Like, you cannot graduate without these courses. They cannot be skipped. There is no other way. These lessons must be learned. They are your lessons, and you'll learn them the way that you learn them. But you have to learn them. Remember, again, this is for permanent weight loss, which is the only thing I ever do Is I want to help you permanently, not temporarily.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:25]:
And so these lessons must be learned, because remember, we're changing our relationship with food and hunger and eating in service of having a new relationship. Because if we kept the relationship we have now, we would be the way we are now. If we want a different weight, we have to have a different relationship. In order to get that different relationship, we have to learn these lessons, these particular lessons. There are going to be some lessons that Sally needs that you don't need and some that you need that Sally doesn't need. That's why this is very unique. And it's from our upbringing, the messages we got, the diet culture, because a lot of us grew up in the same general culture, we're going to have similar ones, like I said, in bigger buckets. But the very specifics will be encountered by you in your day.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:18]:
And these are not moments to beat ourselves up, to feel hopeless. These are moments to gather information. So here's some examples. If I'm doing the hunger scale and I notice I ate after dinner when I was not hungry at all, that's going to be one lesson. Oh, I notice I ate and I wasn't even hungry. Oh, that's so interesting. Okay, this is an area I'm going to need to build some skills around. Or I noticed that I was out to dinner with friends.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:57]:
I overate. Okay, I wasn't planning on overeating. That's lesson two. I found that if I had a meeting with my boss, I skipped lunch, and I was ravenous by dinner. Okay, amazing. I noticed through the hunger scale that I got way too hungry. And I looked back on that and saw that it had to do with skipping lunch because of a meeting. That's lesson three.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:23]:
Not only are those situations to solve for on a practical level, because there's some practical things we can do, but they, more importantly, are also skills to be learned or gaps in knowledge. And those gaps must be filled with skills that have to be built in order for us to have a new relationship, have a new weight permanently. So with dinner, my example with I ate after dinner, in looking at it, I found that I was bored after dinner. That's an important thing to notice. I was bored after dinner, so I ate with my friends. I went mindless. I didn't even check in with my hunger whatsoever. Okay, that's really good to know.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:07]:
And when I looked at my lunch with my boss, skipping lunch, I noticed that I tend to drop all my boundaries when it comes to my boss. Noticing those things is vital. So Then the curriculum becomes, okay, bored after dinner, I'm learning stuff about emotional eating. That's how I'm going to permanently change that kind of situation. Mindfulness is something I need to be aware of when I am with my friends. And maybe there are other situations in which I go mindless. Okay, really good to know. Mindfulness is a skill I'm going to need to build.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:50]:
And then with the boss example, valuing my needs, honoring my body, maybe there's some planning there, but it's this being, letting my boundaries be permeated by my boss, that's really a typical thing, right? Power dynamic. There's so much there, it's really good to notice. So the curriculum becomes emotional eating, mindfulness, valuing my needs, my body's needs. Now we know what to work on, right? There's the curriculum, work on emotional eating, work on mindfulness, work on valuing my needs in terms of hunger in particular. And when you see this, these are big topics, big things. This is why it's challenging to lose weight permanently. It's not because you don't like broccoli that much. This is a really important point because what happens is we end up blaming ourselves because we don't like chicken or it's hard to make organic something.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:04]:
But that's not it. They're much bigger topics that need to be tackled. They absolutely can be tackled. But these are the things that we need to do to get to permanent weight loss. It's not permanent. Character flaw. That is hopeless. These were just identifying skills that need to be built and we're going to build them.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:30]:
It's just noticing that there's some skills that you don't currently have. And when you have a willingness to learn them because there's a gap in knowledge, there's a skill that needs to be built. And if there's a willingness to learn them, then you'll be willing to tackle emotions and thoughts and difficult conversations and paying attention to the needs of your body. These are all things that we often don't do. And so learning to do them is a process. And that's part of the process of weight loss. For fertility. The really amazing news is that when you skill up in these areas for weight loss, it's not only about food and eating.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:20]:
They become so much easier, but so do relationships, work life relationships with your mother in law, your best friend, your boss, your sister, everything changes because these skills translate into all areas of your life. But weight loss becomes permanent too, and so much easier. Like when you build skills, you build them and then you have the skill. You can't unring a bell. When you have these skills, you possess them for life. This is why it's permanent. You're not going to suddenly do it differently because you will have the skill to handle emotional eating. You will have the skill to handle difficult situations, difficult conversations, and you will own those.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:08]:
Those are skills you will have forever. And so your weight will be very easy to maintain and your life will be easier to handle. Really, this is why I love this. It's because we can change your whole life by starting with changing your weight. If you're interested in losing weight, it's really a beautiful thing. So dive in. Start. You can literally start right this second.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:34]:
If weight loss is something you're working on, start right now. Because any difficulty is just data. You're building your curriculum and it will get you to where you want to be weight wise and every other way too. If you want help with this, you know where to find me @StephanieFeinMD on Instagram and LinkedIn or go to my website StephanieFeinMD.com Press the lose weight with me button. I would love to love, love, love to help you. I'm sending you so much love. This is the way.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:09]:
You're not doing it wrong. If it's difficult and there is love and skill to be had in this process, this is the way to do it. Sending you so much love. Have a wonderful week.
